While inexpensive for a 17.3-inch laptop, the Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7052's bright screen and 500GB hard drive aren't enough to make up for poor application performance, below-average battery life, and modest feature set.

You don't often see 17.3-inch laptops at the low price the Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7052 ($738.99 list) sells for. Available at Best Buy, the L675D-S7052 comes with a lot of screen real-estate and a spacious 500GB hard drive. But as far as desktop replacement laptops go, there are plenty of other options that provide better overall performance, longer battery life, and a more robust feature set.

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Design
The L675D-S7052 uses the identical chassis as the Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7046 ($649.98 list, 2.5 stars), except that the L675D-S7052 has a gray-colored glossy lid and keyboard deck covered in a swirling pattern of small boxes, while the Toshiba L675D-S7046 instead repeats this pattern across a black glossy finish. Regardless of the color, though, the exterior is easily marred by fingerprint smudges. Weighing in at 5.95 pounds the L675D-S7052 is much lighter than many other 17-inch laptops; for example, the HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl ($999.99 list, 4 stars, EC) weighs 7.0 pounds and Dell Inspiron 17R-2248MRB ($849.99 list, 3.5 stars) comes in at 6.7 pounds.

One aspect of the L675D-S7052's design that I don't like is that the lid easily flexes under even just light pressure. The L675D-S7052 shares this same design attribute with a number of other desktop replacements, such as the Dell Inspiron IM5030-3413B3D ($629.98 list, 2 stars) and Toshiba Satellite A665-S6086 ($804.99 list, 4 stars). With the screen on the other side of the thin, supple lid, I can't help but wonder how susceptible the display could be to accidental damage.

The lid isn't the only part of the L675D-S7052 that moves more than I would like; the traditional-style keyboard and dedicated number pad also flexed too much under the weight of my fingers. The touchpad is covered with a rough, textured surface, which is a marked contrast from the glossy palm rest it sits flush with. The touchpad and its buttons are easy to use, but compared to other laptops, the L675D-S7052's 3.5-inch (diagonal) touchpad feels rather puny.

Features
What's definitely not puny is the L675D-S7052's 17.3-inch display. Images look bright and colors are vibrant on the 1,600-by-900 resolution screen. It's a great display for watching movies; but if you do, you'll probably want to use headphones. The L675D-S7052 spit out rather tinny-sounding audio that distorts when the volume is turned way up. I was able to improve the quality of the audio by playing around with the settings, but the end result was only moderately better than what I started with.

If you want to output the L675D-S7052's display to an external monitor or TV, you can only do so using the laptop's VGA connector. Unlike most desktop replacements, the L675D-S7052 does not have an HDMI-out port. Connectors that you will find on the laptop include 100Mbps Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports, and one eSATA/USB combo port. You'll also find a multi-format card reader, dual-layer DVD+/-RW drive, and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi support. While these are all useful connections, numerous other desktop replacements come with additional USB ports and ExpressCard slots.

Unlike the Toshiba L675D-S7046, which comes with just a 320GB hard drive, the L675D-S7052 has a more capacious 500GB (5,400rpm) drive. Both laptops come with a bevy of Toshiba-labeled utilities installed on their hard drives, but thankfully the L675D-S7052 does not also have the copious amount of bloatware that comes preinstalled on the L675D-S7046. Instead, the L675D-S7052 has a "Best Buy PC app" that automatically opens when Windows launches. From this window, you can browse through a wide range of software and utilities you can purchase and download from Best Buy. If you want, you can disable the app from auto-loading at Windows startup and never look at it again. The L675D-S7052 comes with a limited one-year parts and labor warranty, and Toshiba offers toll-free support at any hour of the day or night.

Performance
As we've seen time and again, AMD-based laptops simply don't perform as well as their similarly priced Intel-based brethren. This, unfortunately, puts the 2.9GHz AMD Phenom II N640-based L675D-S7052 mostly in the back-end of the performance pack. Its PCMark Vantage score of 4,127 can't keep up with the likes of the 2.27GHz Intel Core i3-350M-based Acer Aspire TimelineX AS5820T-5951's ($723 street, 4 stars) score of 5,233 or the 2.4GHz Core i3-370M-based Toshiba Satellite A665D-S6085's score of 5,428. This trend carries over as well to the L675D-S7052's showing on the CineBench R11.5 (1.66) and Photoshop CS5 (6:25) tests, where both the Acer AS5820T-5951 and Toshiba A665D-S6085 were noticeably speedier.

The one exception to the Intel-based dominance is the L675D-S7052's performance on the Handbrake test, where its time of 3:10 is actually faster than that of both the Acer AS5820T-5951 (3:23) and Toshiba A665D-S6085 (3:13)albeit by a small margin in the case of the A665D-S6085. Handbrake's video encoding process is heavily impacted by the processor speed, and in this case, the L675D-S7052's 2.9GHz clock speed gives it the advantage over the 2.27GHz and 2.4GHz processors in the Acer AS5820T-5951 and Toshiba A665D-S6085, respectively.

As to how the L675D-S7052 performs compared with the less expensive, 2.2GHz AMD Phenom II N850-based L675D-S7046, the L675D-S7046 had slightly better PCMark Vantage (4,246) and Cinebench R11.5 (1.87) showings. The L675D-S7046 gained the advantage on these tests--even though its processor runs at a slower clock speedbecause these multithreaded apps were able to take advantage of the L675D-S7046's triple-core Phenom II N850 processor (the L675D-S7052 has a dual-core AMD Phenom II N640 processor). On the other hand, the L675D-S7046 fell behind on both the Handbrake (3:26) and Photoshop CS5 (7:52) tests, where raw CPU speed becomes a much more important factor.

The L675D-S7052 also drops the ball with its disappointing battery life of 3 hours 31 minutes on MobileMark 2007. This score is about half an hour less than the average battery time we've seen from desktop replacement laptops that don't come with extended-life batteries.

The L675D-S7052 uses an integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphics engine, and its 3DMark06 score of 1,072 at a resolution of 1,024 by 768 indicates that 3D game titles are simply not in its repertoire. But it's important to remember that most desktop replacements that sell for under $1,000 come with integrated graphics, and therefore are limited to mostly just casual games and much older 3D titles. One exception to this maxim is the HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl, which actual comes with a discrete ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 graphics engine that has halfway decent 3D gaming chopsas can be evidenced by its 4,675 3Mark06 score.

There's no question that the Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7052's price tag makes it one of the less-expensive 17.3-inch laptops currently available. But this comes at the cost of lackluster performance and a feature set that is easily eclipsed by many other desktop replacement laptop options. If you truly must have a cheap 17.3-inch laptop, the less expensive Toshiba Satellite L675D-S7046 might be a better optionassuming you can live with the smaller capacity hard drive. But if cost isn't your primary concern, the Editors' Choice HP Pavilion dv7-4083cl offers much better performance and more robust features for a 17.3-inch laptop.